U.S. plays fast and loose with immigration rules unlike any other field of law

OPINION:

According to the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) grants the president broad discretion to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States. All the authority that the Biden administration needed to secure the U.S. border with Mexico is contained within that relatively brief section of statute.

But the Biden administration refused to use the arrows in its quiver and created an unprecedented border crisis. By some estimates, millions of unvetted foreign nationals have made crossed our border illegally and disappeared into the interior of the United States, with the tacit compliance of the U.S. government.

Nevertheless, the radical, anti-borders contingent insists that the immigration anarchy that prevails in our country is the fault of people who support border security. According to the No Border movement, the Senate’s poorly drafted and ill-considered Border Act of 2024 would have made everything all better by prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security from exercising Section 1182(f) authority until after 4,000 illegal aliens jumped the border each week.

That’s right, the Border Act of 2024 would have decreased the ability of the president and DHS to respond to border crises. If you feel you’re being lied to, that’s because those who supported the Senate bill have been telling untruths about their border measure, all in a vain effort to convince the American public they were doing something to impede the stream of foreign nationals flooding into the U.S. from Mexico.

For too long, successive administrations have deliberately ignored the requirements of America’s immigration law, the Immigration and Nationality Act, whenever it was politically expedient to do so.

Whether it was deliberately rendering grants of “Temporary Protected Status” permanent by refusing to terminate short-term offers of protection or creating the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, there has been a tendency to play fast and loose with immigration rules in a way that would never be tolerated in any other field of law. Most of these actions were taken to curry political favor with groups other than the American public.

Far from being a cure-all, the Border Act of 2024 was a symptom of the problem. It would have promoted the interests of foreigners who want to live in the U.S. over those of the U.S. citizens to whom this country belongs. That is unacceptable in the United States,  a constitutional republic that has government of the people, by the people, for the people. That means one thing and one thing only: In America, politicians are supposed to work for the American public, not foreigners who would like to be Americans but are not U.S. citizens.

We are living in the most dangerous global security climate since the outbreak of World War II, yet our nation’s borders are more porous than a kitchen strainer. And that is a recipe for disaster. As of 2021, at least 99 people with links to terrorism had been released into the United States, where they are free to plot heinous acts such as the Boston Marathon bombing or the Pulse nightclub shootings.

The number of Chinese nationals apprehended by the Border Patrol is up 7,000%, and nobody knows how many of them are in the employ of the Chinese army or intelligence services. Meanwhile, border authorities are regularly encountering Iranian men of military age entering the U.S. from Mexico.

It’s bad enough that our enemies are exploiting idiotic border policies to penetrate the interior of the United States. But criminal cartels are busy along the border as well. Deadly fentanyl is pouring into American communities and U.S. citizens are being lost at the rate of about 75,000 per year to fentanyl. Roughly 60,000 foreign men, women and children are trafficked annually into the U.S., where they are forced to perform unpaid labor at construction sites, slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities. Even worse, some are consigned to sexual slavery, where they are robbed of basic human dignity. Meanwhile, migrant gangs are bringing waves of violent crime to our cities.

But none of this is the result of anyone failing to vote for a ridiculous Senate bill that would have conditioned immigration enforcement on permitting massive numbers of aliens to enter our country illegally. It is the direct result of the Biden administration’s unwillingness to use the authority it already possesses to protect U.S. citizens. It would rather throw up its hands and blame its deliberate misfeasance on imaginary statutory restrictions that even the Supreme Court has emphatically said don’t exist.

In reality, the immigration fix that America needs most is federal leadership that is capable of seeing enforcement of immigration law as a national priority and is willing to use the ample authority already on the books to secure the border, deport immigration violators and protect U.S. citizens from illegal aliens who are criminals.

• Tom Homan is a senior fellow at the Immigration Reform Law Institute and the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the institute.